CAMPAIGN 2012

Presidential Hopefuls Woo Iowa Republicans

AWOL from big Iowa GOP fundraiser: Mitt Romney and Herman Cain

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was one of five presidential hopefuls to address a GOP fundraising dinner in Des Moines on Friday.(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

DES MOINES – Just two months from the kick off of the 2012 presidential race at the Iowa caucuses, five Republican contenders for their party’s nomination wooed more than 1,000 activists at the state GOP’s Reagan dinner here on Friday. Missing are the two candidates leading in the Des Moines Register’smost recent poll of caucus-goers: Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

Summaries of the evening’s speeches follow:

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas

In the first of many reminders this evening that the candidates are speaking at a dinner in honor of the late president Ronald Reagan, Paul began his speech by recalling a helicopter ride with the former president to Andrews Air Force Base.

Their subject of their conversation? The gold standard, of course.

“He saw the money issue as being a very important issue,” said Paul, who has made monetary policy a centerpiece of his political career.

The veteran congressman, who once ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, spent much of his speech talking about the need to cut spending. He threatened doom if that doesn't happen.

“What we’re witnessing today is the failure of a system. It’s the end of an era,” Paul asked the audience. “What’s going to come of this? Are we going to drift like the rest into more government solutions or are we going to say enough is enough?”

Paul was introduced with a video featuring his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who hailed his father’s consistent record as a fiscal conservative in Congress.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry

Perry began his speech with the characteristic burst of energy that has marked all of his campaign appearances in recent weeks. He jogged onto the stage, introduced by a movie-trailer-style video that portrayed Perry as a job-creating man of the people.

After recognizing the other candidates, Perry riffed on the Occupy Wall Street protest movement by saying that he and his competitors were trying to “occupy the White House.”

Perry’s speech focused on promoting the 20 percent flat-tax plan he unveiled last week in South Carolina, a plan he is painting as a bold change.

He took aim at the current budget-cutting process in Washington, saying the reason a 12-member “supercommittee” is charged with reducing spending is “because the president kicked the can down the road on reforming the entitlements and cutting spending.”

In a nod to his fellow candidate Newt Gingrich, who has railed against the committee process, he said, “What has it been Newt? We’ve had twenty different committees now?”

Perry said that he would have the “courage” to reform entitlements and cut spending, and promised to impose a pay freeze on Congress and all federal employees except those in the military or public safety business until the budget was balanced. He has pledged to do that by 2020, in part by campaigning across the country to get a balanced budget amendment added to the Constitution.

Before the event, Perry mingled with attendees of the dinner for about 40 minutes. His aides then struggled to get him into his seat as he seemed intent on shaking every hand on his way to his table.

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Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

In contrast to Perry, Bachmann skipped the gladhanding to wait in the VIP area until shortly before her speech. Once she took the podium, the Minnesota congresswoman described herself as a “lone voice in the wilderness” last summer when she defied her own party leadership to oppose raising the debt ceiling.

The nation’s cap on borrowing was raised anyway, but Bachmann argued that she had been proven right.

“We had enough revenue coming into the treasury, we could sufficiently pay the interest on the debt,” she said. “There was absolutely no need for the country to go into default.”

Noting that the national debt is nearing $15 trillion, Bachmann warned that the United States should take heed of the financial crisis facing Greece. “What we’ve just observed was the trailer for where the United States is going.”

The Minnesota congresswoman reminded the Iowa crowd, as she often does, that she was born in their state and she pointed to her intense summer weeks of campaigning for the Iowa straw poll as reaffirming her commitment to running for the presidency.

“I’ve been renewed in hope and love for this nation because of what I saw this summer in Iowa,” she told the crowd.

The crowd listened politely, but did not applaud until about seven minutes into Bachmann’s speech, when she recited her sure-fire Republican crowd-pleaser line: “Barack Obama will be a one term president.”